


A Dark House

by signifying_nothing



Category: VERIVERY (Band)
Genre: Dopplegangers, Gen, Horror, kind of, suspense?, tag tag tag universe
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-24
Updated: 2020-06-24
Packaged: 2021-03-04 03:34:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,572
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24886903
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/signifying_nothing/pseuds/signifying_nothing
Summary: Dongheon has been looking for Kangmin for two days. No one has seen him, no one has heard from him.
Comments: 9
Kudos: 43





	A Dark House

**Author's Note:**

  * For [cluelesskaru](https://archiveofourown.org/users/cluelesskaru/gifts).



> i enjoyed writing this a lot!

The House is dark.

The House is always dark, save for the slices of sunlight that come in through the closed curtains, little spears in the air that show how the dust hasn't moved in an eternity.

The House waits. Lurking, a predator in the water it waits; it doesn't need to rush things. They will come, they always do. Foolish, foolish children who don't understand Houses with rotting shingles and rotting walls and molding corners. Houses with cracked glass in their windows like kaleidoscope eyes.

In Houses like this, every room is a gaping maw.

* * *

Dongheon has been looking for Kangmin for two days. No one has seen him, no one has heard from him. He isn't at home, he isn't at the warehouse. Kangmin has simply vanished into the dark of the town around them, and while Dongheon knows he has to check the House, he doesn't want to.

Dongheon doesn't like the House. It doesn't feel right. It watches him as he approaches like it watches him in his nightmares, looming and clawing. He steps up the path and listens to the gravel crunch under his high-tops.

Dongheon doesn't say anything. He's afraid to open his mouth as he puts a shaking hand on the door handle and pulls it.

Dongheon used to come here, when he was young, when he was unafraid. Before he knew there was something to be afraid of in any old, empty house, left to rot, to stew in its resentment and rage. Dongheon thinks that the House remembers him. The door swings open soundlessly with the barest touch of his hand. It beckons him, it whispers to him, and it feels like spiders crawling around his throat as he steps up into the front foyer. The door eases itself shut behind him. Dongheon closes his eyes and fists his hands, trying not to breathe so loudly, trying not to breathe at all.

The House breathes around Dongheon, hot and wet, and he can nearly feel its teeth in his neck. He takes a few staggering steps forward before stumbling, but he doesn't dare touch the walls to catch himself. He falls to the dusty floor, catching himself on his hands, and feels the weight of the House pressing in on him. He lays there, trying to get his hands to work. They just slide across the dust, make it drift through the sunlight that's just out of his reach. It comes in through a high window, from beneath the curtains.

Dongheon pushes himself to his hands and knees. He has to find Kangmin. If Kangmin is in the House, it might be too late. The House doesn't want Dongheon here. If Kangmin came here looking for shelter, he might have been—

_Clap._

Dongheon freezes, staring at the floor.

_Clap. Clap._

It's coming from his left, where a staircase leads up to the second floor. He pushes himself to stand. He wishes Hoyoung was here. Someone to hold his hand.

The House calls Dongheon further in. He stands and sways, finally looking at the stairs. There is nothing but darkness, nothing but the shadows of hatred and hunger.

_Clap. Clap. Clap._

Dongheon steps towards the stairs. He dares to put his hand on the tongue of the banister and feels it, wet and soft under his touch, though its core is firm. He jerks back and fists his hand, pulling it close to his chest. Something traces down his back like dripping water. It's so hot. So humid. Dongheon takes the first step, the resentful board creaking under his weight. Another. Another step. Dongheon feels like he's going to be sick. Like whatever disease is infecting the House is infecting _him._ More steps. He's on the landing, just under a large window. Dongheon reaches for the curtain and feels sound echoing so loudly it rattles his lungs.

_Clap. Clap. Clap. Clapclapclap._

_Hyung, Come this way. Come towards my hands, hyung._

“Kangmin—?”

He says it without thinking. Speaking is a mistake.

As though his voice is a catalyst, everything in the House screams and writhes and claws. The claps boom and echo and the whole House moves. Dongheon turns towards the second staircase, the one that would let him get to the second floor, and gasps in horror at the sight of himself who is not himself. It grabs at him, tears at his clothes as Dongheon staggers back and then falls down the stairs, landing flat on his back and cracking his head on the floorboards. Everything is spinning, the world, the House and all of its loathing. There is something, someone, on top of him and it screeches, inhuman and hateful and murderous.

Dongheon doesn't want to die. He doesn't want this House and all its evil to take him away from a life he has yet to start living. He struggles, fights, bares his teeth but doesn't speak again. He reaches out and finds a broken piece of the handrail. The stairs must have been upset in all the rocking, heaving and thrashing of the House. Dongheon hits the near mirror-image on top of himself in the head. It screams in rage and pain and Dongheon scrabbles across the floor, staggering to the door, it's behind him, it's teeth are in his neck—

_Hyung?_

Dongheon halts, shaking.

_Hyung, where are you going?_

It's Kangmin's voice, but it can't be Kangmin. It's the House, it's the House, everything in Dongheon knows it, he knew the House would hurt him, he knew the House would grind him in its teeth if he dared to step into it.

_Hyung, you're supposed to play with me._

Dongheon presses himself to the door—his face and chest and hands and thinks of Hoyoung. Thinks of Kangmin, part of the House now, as much as the walls or the floors or the toothy maws of the doorframes.

_Hyung._

A hand on Dongheon's shoulder. Fingers on his neck. They feel... Wrong. Twisted. Wet. Broken.

 _Hyung,_ Kangmin's voice is a whisper. Dongheon can hear his smile.

_Hyung. Come play with me. I've been waiting for you._

Dongheon bares his teeth towards the door. He knows it will not open. He knows he shouldn't have come here, should not have walked into the House by himself no matter how urgent the matter of finding Kangmin was. He lets out a tiny, choked sob. He flattens his hands on the door and tries to push it open, even though he knows it won't. It won't open. Dongheon is trapped in the House that hate built, and he can't get out.

He slides down the door.

In his mind, he can hear shouting. His name, maybe. It all sounds so far away. The House is wrapped around him like a coiling snake and Dongheon can't escape. He hopes that Kangmin isn't in the House, that he didn't come here. That the House is using Dongheon's mind against him, because it knew he would come, it knew he would pass through its teeth.

_Come and play, Dongheon._

It's not Kangmin. It's twisted and rasping and wet.

_Come play with me like you used to._

“What did I do,” Dongheon whispers, tears falling to his jeans as he kneels at the door. “Why do you hate me, what did I do?”

_You're here._

The House embraces Dongheon. It lifts him away from the door with its oppressive strength and drags him in, past the lesions and the gangrenous wounds lining its windows and walls and presses its weight on top of him, all of it. It holds his neck, it chokes him.

_You're here._

* * *

Hoyoung finds Kangmin, luckily, in a subway stop. He's apparently been moving from place to place, hoping to not get noticed by law enforcement. He's a little twitchy, avoiding physical contact which is unusual, but otherwise he's fine. But now Dongheon is gone, and he'd said he was going to the old House out past the borders of the city to look for Kangmin. He'd said something about the House calling Kangmin to it, but Dongheon has always been... Weird about that stuff. He believes in aliens and ghosts and all that.

But Hoyoung goes to the House anyway.

It doesn't look like much to him. Just a rotten old empty house near a forest. He heads up and pulls the door open. It creaks terribly.

“Dongheon?” he calls, loudly. “Hyung! Are you here?”

Hoyoung steps up into the House proper and hesitates. It's so quiet, and so dark.

“Hyung?” Hoyoung steps further forward, leaving the door open behind him. There is a dark hallway leading to a dark room, so he picks up his phone and goes to hit his flashlight app, but hits his camera instead. On the screen, Hoyoung sees—

He almost drops his phone at the sight of Dongheon standing there. He's dressed strangely—he doesn't really like grey, but his entire outfit is grey—he's not wearing shoes, either. His hair seems too long. He looks so tired.

“Hyung?” Hoyoung says, stepping closer to him and hesitating, glancing down at his phone and holding it up again. To Dongheon's left, a pair of hands slides out of the darkness.

_Clap. Clap. Clap._

_Play a game with me._

The door slams shut behind him. He hears a twisted, hysterical echo of Kangmin's laugh screeching through it. Something is crushing him .

Hoyoung doesn't even have time to scream. 


End file.
